by M. V. Stott
‘Have what?’
‘The rhyme of bewitchment?’
‘How did you know I’d have one?’
‘Because this has happened before. Many times. The troubling thing is, it should not be happening anymore. Not in London. It should be impossible.’
‘Well it is, I’ve got twenty kids in a hospital ward in Ealing who went to bed one night and refuse to get up.’
‘You do not understand. If what you say is true, if indeed this is the creature I think it is, then we can expect worse than a few children having a lie-in. Far worse. The whole of the city could be in danger.’
14
L’Merrier read the note Amy had written. The rhyme that seemed to be the trigger for each kid who spoke it being unable to wake up again. He sighed as he read the lines and nodded sagely.
‘You recognise the rhyme?’ I asked.
‘It is as I feared. The creature has found a way back into the thoughts and dreams of the children of London. It will only spread from there. Within a month, perhaps less, every child in the city will be taken; their bodies left to slumber as their souls suffer in eternal torment.’
He passed the note back to me.
‘What kind of creature is it? What’s its name?’
‘Name? Oh, It does not have a name, you stupid thing.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It does not have a name because the creature is not really alive.’
‘So what? It’s a ghost?’
L’Merrier stared at me silently for several seconds. It wasn’t hard to work out that I’d said the wrong thing again.
‘How do you make it through a day without setting yourself on fire?’ he asked.
‘Well, sometimes I don’t.’
Almost a smile, I was sure of it.
‘The thing that created this rhyme is rage and fear and blind fury incarnate. Unconscionable deeds and desire for revenge weaponised. The idea made reality by a concentration of magic and emotion, exploding out of the infinite possibility and creativity of youth. And it should no longer be able to do the things it is doing.’
He was losing me with this, but the fact that he looked so troubled shook me.
‘What do you mean it shouldn’t be able to do all of this? Was it killed already?’
He looked at me and smiled, ‘You cannot kill a thing such as this. It is not what you and I would consider to be alive, remember. No, it cannot be killed, but it can be prevented. It can be locked, chained, banished from this plane. And it was once, many years ago, when it appeared in our city and began taking children. It was before your time, I believe. Poor Lyla was the Familiar then, of course. Tragic thing.’
My predecessor, Lyla. For some reason I always felt funny when she was brought up. No one ever told me what happened to her, but I had enough of the pieces to know that it was nothing good. I think, when they were alive, my witches were surprised that I had made it as long as I had. Sixty years of age. I don’t think anyone expected a familiar of the London Coven to make it to such an age.
‘I still don’t understand exactly what it is you’re saying I’m up against.’
L’Merrier bowed his head and sighed, as though dealing with a very stupid child. To him, that was pretty close to the truth.
‘Shall I make my words smaller for you, familiar? Would pictures help?’
I felt my fists clench. Yeah, that would be a great idea, Stella. I unclenched.
‘Emotions are never more volcanic than when we are young,’ he explained. ‘Never more frightening and strange and acutely felt. Reason is never more blinded by those very emotions that attack our minds and bodies as though we are a castle under siege.’
L’Merrier began to glide around his shop, hands drifting over his many strange display items. A helmet from some ancient army that I couldn’t put my finger on. A shrunken head whose mouth opened as though it was going to scream when his fingers made contact with it. A portrait of himself and three young women, its paint ancient and cracking. I squinted; was that…? My witches? My witches and L’Merrier?
‘Oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you?’ said L’Merrier, somehow within inches of me, even though, a heartbeat earlier, he’d been at the far end of his shop.
‘No, I’m listening,’ I said, acting unfazed. ‘Go on.’
He snorted and turned his back on me. ‘Imagine a bullied child. Bullied by other children. A tale as old as time, wouldn’t you say? Now imagine that raw emotion. The raw, explosive emotion of a child. The abject terror. The shame. The unfocussed terror and rage. Imagine that happening over and over and over again. A never-ending cycle, picking up a head of steam as all over the city, child after child is made to feel this way. Made to feel this way by other children.’
‘You’re saying bullying caused this?’
‘Simply put, so even your pea-brain can grasp it, the emotions stirred up across this city have come to a boil. The raw emotions met the Uncanny power that is so heavy in London, and an idea was born. An idea of blind retribution. A lashing out against not one child, but all children. And so this thing was created; this thing that exists not in our plane of reality, but that can take a child at their most vulnerable. In their dreams.’
I was finally getting the picture.
‘So, why the rhyme?’
‘Fear. Oh, it wants fear, and that is the first step. A whisper in the playground about a rhyme that can conjure the devil to take you as you slumber. A child will believe it. Oh, they would deny it, but there it will tickle, round and fat in their minds, as they walk up the stairs to bed. And then it has them.’
So, if I was grasping this correctly, what I was up against was not exactly a monster as much as the idea of a monster brought into “reality” by the raw, unchecked emotion of children. Why couldn’t it just be a flesh and blood thing so I could punch it in the face?
‘It doesn’t sound exactly fair. They just created an even worse bully.’
‘A creature born of centuries of bullying and made stronger every time a child bullies another. It has life and it has purpose: to unleash hell on children everywhere. To lash out at them for what they have done. To become wrath. It is not a rational being. It exists purely to vent that unthinking anger that every child feels towards their bully.’
‘And now I have come, to punish you all.’
‘Well, indeed.’
‘How did you stop it the first time?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t me. It was your coven.’
I smiled and felt my heart swell a little, but the momentary feeling was soon laid to waste when the pictures of their dead, shredded bodies popped into my mind’s eye.
‘What did they do?’ I asked.
‘They put certain, shall we say, magical locks in place. Safeguards. As I say, the creature exists in another plane. They blocked that plane from being able to interact with ours. No child should be able to speak those words in the correct order; your masters made sure of that. And that makes me worry.’
‘Has someone helped the thing?’
‘I think not. London is a focal point in the Uncanny world, which also makes it a weak point. A point of attack. A crack in the window. The witches of London did not just exist to police this place, they took it upon themselves to hold it together. To stop it sliding off the end of the cliff. Now, it would appear, that since their deaths, some of these locks have begun to, shall we say, spring open. Terrible things are slipping through, and more shall follow.’
‘Can you put the protections back in place? Reseal the locks?’
He looked at me in what I thought was a pretty shifty manner.
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I may be one of the most powerful Uncanny things to ever stride across this planet. A colossus. A true master of the light and dark arts. A man who has met the Devil and made him call me sir. But that does not mean I have mastery over all things.’ L’Merrier fussed at his gown, agitated, before turning to me with a scowl. ‘To put it bluntly, I have no idea how the witches did what they d
id.’
Well this was a day to remember. The mighty Giles L’Merrier, admitting he didn’t know everything. A flaw in the diamond at last. I almost danced a jig, but just about managed to keep my body under control.
He went on: ‘I only know that the three of them combined were able to set up a web of protective spells that criss-crossed this city and prevented it from falling into chaos. They blocked the worst of other realms from slipping into our reality. Neutralised certain threats. The power it would need to generate such a web, and to keep the magic fed so it would sustain, so it would not collapse and blow away upon the breeze… it is almost inconceivable.’
‘Something is happening in this city, Stella. It’s like the stitches that hold the place together are starting to fray.’
Jake the ghost, he’d tried to tell me that things were falling apart and I’d brushed him off. Had he been right? Had he felt what L’Merrier was describing? The erosion of these magical safeguards my witches had set up?
‘So, what should I do?’ I asked L’Merrier.
‘There is always a tipping point that gives “life” to a thing such as this. A single incident that lights the blue touch paper. You must locate that inciting moment: the terrified child, cowering from their bully. Do that and you will find the creature. In other words, you do your job—the one you were created to do—you insignificant glob of sputum.’
15
I left L’Merrier’s shop with no invitation to return and headed back to the coven. As I pushed through the ticket barrier and walked towards the tube platform, my head swirled with all the new information L’Merrier had dropped on me.
There was of course the wider concern. The idea that my witches had somehow kept bad things from slipping into London, and now they were gone those barriers were crumbling. That what Jake had told me was true. But I couldn’t get too side-tracked by that. All I knew for sure was that twenty kids in a hospital were being terrorised and might never wake up. That more and more would join them unless I could pin this creature down. This weird amalgam of emotions brought to life to lash out at kids, whether they were guilty or innocent. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that feeling of shame, of helplessness, of fear, of rage, all squashed up together and firing out of a child made to live in terror by other children. Kids it should be playing with, laughing with, not running from.
I felt Amy’s note scrunched in my hand, in the pocket of my jacket. I needed to find a way to locate the tipping point. The final inciting incident that had pushed things over the edge and made this creature powerful enough to drag itself into existence.
And then, well, we’d get to the “then” once we got there.
The train rocked me back and forth as it charged through the black.
***
I didn’t call David, I wanted him and Amy away from the coven while I worked. I didn’t know for certain that what I was about to do wouldn’t put Amy in danger if she was there to see it, so I left them to their day-trip and got to work.
I sketched a chalk pentagram on the slate square again and placed the note with the full rhyme at its centre.
The magic of the coven washed around me. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and drew the energy towards me. Felt it lap against me in great waves, soaking into me, becoming part of me. I trembled with the power, the buzz, heard myself giggle in delight. For this to work, I’d need to hold and direct a lot of power. More than I would usually take on. Drawing in even a small amount of surrounding magic was pleasurable, allowing this amount to drench me was intoxicating. I licked my lips and opened my eyes, my pupils huge, my cheeks aching from smiling. The magic of my coven had a special effect on me. An illicit thrill. A weaker Uncanny could become lost in it; let its mighty waves break over them again and again until they were buried beneath them
But I was stronger than that.
I was created in this room.
This magic was my magic.
I took a step towards the pentagram, tendrils of multi-coloured, molten magic trailing behind me. I knelt and held out my open hands to the note, to the words written upon it.
I grunted and pushed the power into the words.
‘Show me,’ I said. My voice eight times my own, a mighty, booming, command.
The last time I’d only had a partial rhyme and no idea what it was exactly I was hoping to discover. This time I had the full rhyme and knew exactly what I wanted it to show me. I wanted it to reveal its past. Its birth. To drag the past into the present. That sort of magic was difficult, almost beyond me. It’s only in that room in my coven that I could ever hope to tackle such a thing. And even then it hurt.
A breeze.
Wind whipped back my hair.
I wasn’t alone.
The light in the room had dimmed, the walls seemed distant. Transparent. Were there things beyond the walls, in the shadows?
Wake no more, no more, no more, no more...
The words repeated on the wind as it pulled at me.
I pushed more magic into the note, into the words. They glowed silver and rose off the page, growing larger and larger as they spread to cover the ceiling. Only it wasn’t the ceiling anymore, it was the sky. Hadn’t I been in the coven? Hadn’t I been in my home?
‘Show me,’ I screamed. I didn’t realise at first that I was screaming as the magic of the Uncanny surged through me, fed the spell, fed the rhyme, but I was. I could tell because my throat had begun to hurt. Maybe I’d been screaming for minutes, hours, days, forcing the rhyme to give up its secret. To show me its birthplace.
To show me where fear turned to revenge.
Endless, constant, ravenous, unfocussed, revenge.
‘Show me!’
Damp fingers traced a line across my neck, my cheek, pulled at my hair.
Revenge not against the bully who finally created this thing. Or against any bully. Just against everyone. Every child. All were guilty in the eyes of the cowering, isolated child with the bloody nose and trembling hands.
A figure in the corner of my eye, its movements unnatural, sharp, jerking its way towards me. Trying to distract me? Was whatever owned this rhyme trying to break my concentration? My link to its spell? Maybe it felt what I was doing, realised what I was attempting.
Was I in danger?
‘Show me!’
Wake no more, Wake no more, Wake no more...
I looked down to see a moving carpet of large, black rats flowing past me, their greasy fur buffeting against my ankles, my knees, my thighs.
I spoke the words of the rhyme over and over again, not allowing myself to disconnect from my focus.
A child was crying.
A mournful sob at the edge of my hearing.
I was in a school corridor, pressed up against the lockers, a fist coming to meet me, my head snapping back.
More tears now, more voices. So many, one after the other, a chorus of fear.
I was in a field with my sister—
My sister?
I don’t have—
I look up to see three boys climb over the fence and point at us, cruel smiles on their faces, I stand in front of my sister, I’m terrified. The biggest one runs towards me and—
‘Show me!’
So many screams, so many voices, I can see them all around me, crowding in. They look like ghosts, or afterimages, shuffling, alone yet packed in so tightly I’m worried they might crush me and—
I’m in my bedroom—
I’m in the school toilets—
I’m in an alleyway out of view of adults—
And I’m punched, I’m kicked, I’m spat on and laughed at—
Children’s faces, twisted with hatred leering down at me, the soles of shoes coming to meet my knees as they stamp down and down and down and—
I’m getting lost!
It’s too much—
So many—
So many broken children—
So much pain—
Maybe they deserve it—
/> Maybe the creature is right—
Punish them all, them all, them all—
‘You will show me!’
Silence.
The book of the past has stopped jumping from page to page and the chorus of crying children had ceased. I was alone again. I lowered my shaking hands and pushed myself to my feet, staggering slightly, having to lean against the brick wall to steady myself.
I was in a wide back alley of some sort. There were bins, overflowing. Large bins. I was behind a row of shops where unwanted goods were thrown and rats scuttled.
I turned to find a pair of small legs poking out from behind one of the large, metal bins. They were laid out flat. Unmoving.
‘Hello,’ I said, stepping towards—
The picture warped like film, bubbling as if lit by a match. It was trying to burn the image down. To hide it from me.
‘I see it,’ I said. ‘I know where you come from now. You’re too late.’
There was a sound like a thousand children screaming in fury, then I was at the centre of the ghostly afterimages again as furious faces lunged towards me, fists pummelling me, passing right through, freezing me, I had to break the spell, had to get—
—I was on the ground. When did I fall? I wasn’t behind the shops anymore, wasn’t in my coven, I had to get back, I had to follow the breadcrumbs or I might be lost forever, and—
Wake no more.
No more.
No more.
16
I woke up to find David and Amy crouched over me.
‘See, she’s not dead,’ said Amy. ‘You own me a Mars bar.’
I sat up, my head groggy.
‘What have I told you about day drinking?’ said David as he helped me to my feet.
‘Hilarious,’ I replied. ‘What time is it?’
‘Almost ten,’ said Amy.
‘What? Ten?’ I’d been blacked out for hours.
‘Yeah, you were supposed to call us to tell us we could come back, remember?’ said David. ‘Only you didn’t call, it was late, our feet hurt like bastards, so here we are and there you were, spark out on the floor. What happened? Are you okay?’